Garry Tan has turned Y Combinator into a startup again—applying zero-based thinking, cutting bloat, scaling impact, and rekindling its builder-first roots with founder-mode intensity. This is YC reimagined not as an institution, but as a living, evolving product.
Key Takeaways
Garry Tan leads YC with zero-based thinking: if YC were created today, what would it include—and what would it cut?
YC is now structured like a product: constant iteration, sprints, user-centric programming, and founder experience at the core.
Scaling doesn’t mean dilution—YC balances 1,000+ companies a year while deepening quality and reach.
Culture is curated through hiring, firing, promotion, and feedback loops—not perks or rituals.
Hard tech, AI, and unconventional founders are now core bets—not side tracks.
Politics, education reform, and local government activism are part of Tan’s broader vision for abundance.
YC's partner-founder dynamic is “soft advisory” not control—"We’re not the boss, we’re the benevolent sherpa."
Founder diversity—geographic, demographic, and intellectual—is now seen as a core advantage, not a side benefit.
YC is building durable, founder-led companies with fewer employees and sharper focus thanks to AI-native playbooks.
Zero-Based Rebuilding: Making YC a Startup Again
Garry Tan adopted zero-based accounting to evaluate every part of YC: "If we built it again, what would stay? What would go?"
This pruning mindset is borrowed from gardening—cutting early to let strong branches bloom.
He emphasizes long-term stewardship: "Culture is who you hire, fire, promote—not what’s written on walls."
Tan reinstated founder-mode energy from day one, inspired by conversations with Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.
YC cut underused programs, overhauled systems, and reimagined onboarding to match what current founders actually need.
He believes founder empathy isn’t a buzzword—it’s an operational principle. Everything starts from user pain.
The goal: make YC as sharp and essential today as it was in 2005—only bigger, more inclusive, and more generative.
The internal mindset has shifted from tradition to experimentation: Tan encourages "burning good ideas to find better ones."
Scaling Without Dilution: The Mass-Custom YC
YC now funds over 1,000 companies per year, up from just 15 per batch two decades ago.
Demo Day now attracts over $1.2B in targeted capital annually.
AI tooling, internal process automation, and streamlined partner involvement allow scalability without compromising mentorship.
Partners now deploy their time more strategically—focusing on fewer, higher-leverage interventions across multiple companies.
The program is evolving to include verticalized tracks, conferences (e.g., hard tech mini-summits), and differentiated founder pathways.
YC treats scale not as volume—but as surface area. The goal isn’t to do more. It’s to touch more deeply.
It’s building a multi-player mode for founder success—where peer groups, sector communities, and tools do much of the heavy lifting.
Founder Archetypes: Mispriced Outsiders and Spiky Talent
YC is focused on technical builders—but wants to shatter myths about pedigree: "It's not just Stanford or MIT—it’s UIUC, it’s Nigeria, it’s open-source kids from nowhere."
Tan seeks spiky people: deeply obsessed with one thing, often since youth.
Systems thinkers who can decode customer needs and reverse-engineer complex environments are favored.
He praises founders with commercial intuition: "They yank requirements out of users like a great seller listens."
YC embraces archetypes beyond first-timers—returning founders (like Parker from Rippling) are welcomed and supported.
Tan pushes against credential bias—his internal motto: "We look for signal, not surface."
Some of the best founders YC has backed barely passed high school. What they share is resourcefulness, edge, and urgency.
Soft Power, Not Control: The Partner as Sherpa
YC partners are not bosses—they are high-leverage advisors.
“We’re here to help you not die. But if you want to drive off a cliff, that’s your call.”
Good partners give spiky advice, not median content. Founders are expected to filter and decide.
YC culture discourages blind obedience—even to PG’s own advice: “Trust your intuition, take what helps, discard the rest.”
The partner-founder relationship is grounded in empathy, experience, and mutual respect—not coercion.
Garry has added structured onboarding for partners to increase founder empathy and alignment.
The partner memo system, where feedback is shared post-meeting, allows asynchronous wisdom transfer.
YC’s power comes from trust, not enforcement. The founders stay in the driver’s seat.
AI, Hard Tech, and Vertical Ascent
AI has exploded across the portfolio. Founders are building lean, high-margin SaaS tools for vertical industries.
Examples include medical billing, legal services, and education—all ripe for AI-native disruption.
Hard tech is booming—YC supports hardware startups with dedicated tracks, deep alumni support, and tailored capital access.
The most compelling hard tech founders raise $5M–$20M post-demo day thanks to YC’s curated capital base.
YC’s belief: AI may allow fewer hires, higher ARR, and more defensibility—but founder quality still matters most.
Garry says the real unlock is merging technical edge with GTM velocity.
YC sees itself as a launchpad for "fat-thin" startups: capital-efficient, high-leverage, deeply technical.
Beyond Startups: Civic Leadership and National Ambitions
Garry Tan is investing time and capital into local politics, education reform, and public safety.
Sparked by frustration during COVID and SF’s DA controversy, Tan stepped into the public ring.
He believes the media vacuum and ideological gatekeeping weakened civil trust in the Bay Area.
His goal: rebuild SF into a city that reflects abundance-minded moderation—not purity tests and dysfunction.
At the state and national levels, Tan supports leaders like Brooke Jenkins and sees California as a potential bellwether for moderate reform.
His worldview is founder-informed: focus on leverage, execution, and building coalitions that compound.
He doesn’t want YC to stay in the valley echo chamber—he wants it to scale culture and courage.
Startup Philosophy, Reframed
Tan rejects dogma—fat vs lean startup, compound vs focused—preferring founder-fit logic: "If you can raise with Keith Rabois, do it. If not, lean works."
He encourages founders to play to their advantages: team, capital access, timing, and unique insight.
YC’s real value is community and trust—batchmates sharing source code, co-investors building networks, and alumni reaching back.
Tan sees YC as a knowledge graph of edge cases—every success becomes a forked path others can learn from.
What persists: "Just build. Talk to users. Don’t die."
With Tan at the helm, YC is more than a program—it’s a system for producing prosperity, one weird, brilliant builder at a time.
In a world chasing unicorns, YC builds builders. And builders still change everything.
